Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian “Meet Christopher”—the fourth title in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s illustrated series for 9- to 12-year-olds—introduces a young Osage boy from northeast Oklahoma.
Author Genevieve Simermeyer selected her cousin as the focus of the book, the fourth in the My World series published by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Christopher Cote lives in Skiatook, Okla., a town on the border of the Osage reservation. Simermeyer, who is the museum’s school programs manager, and Katherine Fogden, who is a museum photographer and Mohawk, traveled to Oklahoma to document Christopher’s life.
“I think what makes him interesting is that he is a lot like every other kid in his school,” Simermeyer said. “He’s in the band, he likes to play the trombone. He very much has a sense of not having to be only one thing or another. Participating in all the extracurricular activities doesn’t impinge on being an Osage person. They are all a part of who he is; he doesn’t feel like one thing is more important than the other.”
I'm guessing the number of times the comic has portrayed children playing in a school band is roughly zero. Unless they were caught in a gang-related shootout that riddled their bodies with bullets, that is.
For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Books.
I'm leaving this link here because I don't know how otherwise to send a message. If you haven't seen the review, there is a book called SILENT WARRIOR, a photo collection of contemporary North American Indians. I just saw a review today in the Globe and Mail.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/seeing-past-old-myths/article1448091/